Righting wrongs

Date: January 2011
Test Centre: Upton
Reason for fail: Serious fault, Use of Mirrors - Change speed

This is a fairly busy roundabout between Greasby and Upton. It has a small niche of a road off to your right, that leads into a short dead end, where people sometimes park their cars. This causes people to signal late if they want to take the exit before the one that's being approached in the picture above.

Steve came to this situation on his driving test. Unsure of whether he had a safe gap, he didn't really get himself sorted out, and he stalled because he was going much too slowly for third gear.

Scott abruptly stopped the car, put his clutch down and his handbrake on. He started his engine, and put the car into gear one. Then he moved away safely. The abrupt stop caused the person behind to get very close, and they themselves had to do an emergency stop. Perhaps other people further back also had to stop very quickly.

OK. So everyone stalls now and again. How should you sort it out?

First thing to do was to check the mirror! Everyone gets it wrong from time to time, and if you do find yourself off the straight and narrow, you need to keep yourself safe. This means being aware of what's going on around you. Stopping suddenly may not be the best course of action, expecially approaching a roundabout, where the person behind you may well be looking right to see what's coming, instead of looking where they're going. In this case, what Scott should have done is put his clutch down, sort out first gear, and start his engine. Even if it meant going over the give way line a bit (the vehicle that caused Scott to panic had turned off to the left without signalling)

People stall for two main reasons. As Scott found, the car will stall if you slow down or stop in a a high gear, and the clutch up. The other time is when people move off, either bringing the clutch up too quickly, or in the wrong gear, or without enough revs. If you can minimise the effect your stall has on other road users, you're much more likely to get away with a minor fault than if you do something that causes other people to have to react sharply.